Lindenwood University beat Colorado Mesa University in the RMAC Tournament Semifinals 20-9, CMU was led by Paige Sutton who had three goals and two assists.
The story of this game is the volume of shots from the Lions who shot 40 times versus the Mavericks’ 19 shots. CMU didn’t look like their usual selves in this game, a lot of turnovers and looking uncomfortable the whole game.
“I think what is really interesting thing about this team and going through this experience this year, is something we are still getting used to, is when you are present in the national polls, the pressure never goes away,” Head Coach Shanta Loecker said “It’s not something that anyone on this team has experienced before, and it definitely got to us today, we were scared and not really playing to our full potential.”
CMU came out fast with sophomore midfielder Kiley Barber scoring first, but LWU answered with seven goals of their own to completely turn the tides. The first half was all Lions as they took a commanding lead 15-5 going into the break. The good news for the Mavericks is that they were shooting .625 percent at the half, but the bad news is that they had 18 turnovers.
“We made some adjustments on the defensive end trying to get ourselves to get into a better position to help on the ball and make sure we aren’t opening up isolations up,” aLoecker said “we also talked about building up each other’s confidence and using the little success to fuel that because so much of the first half felt like just nerves.”
LWU came out of the second half strong as they scored their last five goals of the game before the Mavericks would put their first in the back of the net. CMU’s first goal of the half would come with 7:24 left on the game clock, scored by sophomore attacker Marissa Leonardi for her only goal of the game. In the second half the Mavericks controlled the ground ball battle by one, and they continued to shoot hot, but their efforts late just weren’t enough to overcome a really good LWU team.
“Credit to Lindenwood, they’ve got some very athletic players, and they are athlete minded they’ve got good instincts and were reading those passes well, but then on the other side of it I don’t think we were using a lot of our fundamentals because of that bit of fear,” Coach Loecker said.
The Mavericks were led in scoring by freshman midfielder Ashton Whittle who had three goals and one assist, followed by Barber with two goals and one assist.
The Mavericks controlled 14 draws in the game, and sophomore goalie Lula Mitchell had 7 saves.
